The Chieu Hoi Rallier

Two photographs in the Miller collection document this incident. The caption on the first — written at or near the time of the event, in Marvin's own hand or that of someone who was there — reads:

"(L to R) Denny Alloway, Chieu Hoi, Bill Small, Larry Cate, Leroy Sells — Members of Cat Platoon escorting the Chieu Hoi prisoner (wrapped in Illumination Flares parachutes) onto FSB Fontaine after he walked up Hwy 331 to our Base to surrender."

The man in the photographs is not a prisoner of war. He is a Chieu Hoi rallier — a person who came in voluntarily under the Republic of Vietnam's Chieu Hoi ("Open Arms") amnesty program, which offered defectors safety and resettlement assistance throughout the war. Coming in under Chieu Hoi was a formal act: a man walking alone along a road toward a firebase in daylight was following an established protocol, not escaping or lost.

The white material wrapped around his head is parachute fabric from illumination flares, repurposed as a blindfold. Standard procedure: a rallier was blindfolded before reaching the perimeter to prevent him from observing the firebase's layout, positions, and defenses.

A group of soldiers went out from the firebase to meet him on the road and bring him in. Marvin was among them — Larry Cate appears in both photographs, which confirms Marvin photographed the entire sequence himself. An intelligence officer, identifiable by his clean uniform, is visible kneeling near the rallier in one of the photographs. Once in formal custody, a rallier's belongings would be confiscated and processed for intelligence value.

The soldiers named in the caption — Denny Alloway as RTO, Larry Cate, Bill Small, Leroy Sells — place the incident before August 4, 1971. Alloway served as the unit's RTO before Larry Fishell took the role when Marvin became squad leader. The contemporary caption specifies FSB Fontaine and Highway 331; an earlier oral account had suggested FSB Fanning, but the written caption supersedes that recollection.

Marvin came home with two objects from this encounter: a carved woodblock printing stamp — the kind used to produce NVA/VC propaganda leaflets — and a piece of black fabric. Both remain in his son's possession.

The woodblock has not been inked and printed in over fifty years. The impression it was carved to make — whatever image or text it was designed to produce — has not been seen since Vietnam.